Wildlife Photography - Birds

Here is a photo of a couple of ducks that I snapped while at the river waiting for the turtles to appear. The shot was one of those amazing flukes that sometimes happen, I spotted the ducks as they took off and aimed the camera and refocused as quickly as possible. I managed to get only one shot of them as they flew over my head and, much to my surprise, it was nicely in focus and beautifully lit.

The lens I used was a very cheap 300mm zoom, not really the right equipment for bird photography as it is very rare for birds to fly this close. I have been back to the river a few times now and tried to get more shots of the birds but I have never managed to get a shot as good as this one. I even started to look at the cost of 500mm lenses but it seems that a decent one costs at least a couple of thousand euros, maybe Santa will bring me one.

I must confess that, although the ducks were originally both shot in the same photo, I have moved them slightly closer together to improve the composition, something that was easy to do in Photoshop as the background is quite plain.